This blog is about my 5,200-mile road trip in the fall of 2010 to the eight member schools of the University Athletic Association. I wanted to connect -- geographically -- a conference founded not on geography, but on the ideas that competitive college athletics have inherent value, that competitive sports and high academic achievement are not mutually exclusive, and that for student-athletes, studies always come first.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Leia and Claire on Freedom Park in Atlanta this morning. Ready to roll.

As the UAA soccer teams head into the final weekend of double travel games (Friday and Sunday matches), here are the latest national rankings. Plus rankings in cross country and volleyball.
Rochester travels to Emory and Carnegie Mellon; Case Western Reserve travels to Carnegie Mellon and Emory; Brandeis travels to Wash U and Chicago; NYU travels to Chicago and Wash U; Honey travels to Emory and Chicago, God willing and the tires don't blow.
The NCAA's Division 3 includes more than 450 college and universities competing in varsity athletics.
The UAA cross country championship meet is Saturday, Oct. 30, in New York City at Van Cortlandt Park. Take the 1 train to the Bronx. It's the last stop.
The UAA volleyball championship tournament is Nov. 5-6 at the Veale Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Take the RTA Healthline bus east on Euclid Avenue to Adelbert Road, across from Severance Hall. If the driver calls out "next stop Erie," you've gone about 100 miles too far.

Best National Universities - U.S. News & World Report , Sept. 2010
9. University of Chicago
13. Washington University
20. Emory University
23. Carnegie Mellon University
33. New York University
34. Brandeis University
37. University of Rochester
41. Case Western Reserve University
86. University of Colorado (OK, CU isn't in the UAA, but it's where I matriculated. Twice)

Information on the number of D3 programs in each sport was provided by Anthony Moscaret, sports information director for the University Athletic Association.

Honey is in the shop
Sunday night, the refrigerator in Honey, my RV, fell out of its cabinet. Too much shaking, rattling and rolling across Manhattan, the GW bridge and the New Jersey Turnpike.
I have her in the shop today, Great Escape RV of Tucker, Ga., where my friend Richard is going to brace her foundation so she'll be ready to roll Friday night for Chicago after the Emory-Rochester men's game in Atlanta.

Something old, something new

Stuff I don't need. Not shown: Microwave oven.

One thing I learned on the first 2,600 miles of my trip to visit every UAA school is that you don't really need that much stuff when you travel in an RV.
Most of it will get lost or go unused or both.
I am off-loading a microwave, hand weights, blue blazer, some clothes, personal file folders and a huge roll of bubble wrap (don't ask).
However, I am picking up 110 pounds of canine. Lisa, the kindly neighbor lady who was taking care of my dogs, says she will miss them these next two weeks but that they need to be with me on the road. Should be interesting.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Is there a law against taking photographs while you are driving? Fall in Va.

The fall season is more optimistic than spring.
Louder, showier.
Fall's prediction of renewed life is bolder, because to believe in new life you have to look past fall, past winter, and believe in the spring.
It's difficult not to wax cliched when writing about the scenes I have seen from northeastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, western New York State and Massachusetts along the way.
This morning, as I head down I-81 toward North Carolina, bright trees line the highway and pop in the grass median.

My fridge took a licking, but keeps on ticking.

I saw Holsteins grazing amid gray rock outcroppings in Pennsylvania, and a rusty red vine wrapping the trunk of a bright orange hard wood in West Virginia.
Fall is sprung.

A UAA nugget
I have been emailing back and forth with Leo Kocher, the wrestling coach at the University of Chicago, about setting up an interview time when I am in Chicago next week.
(He has coached Chicago wrestling for 32 years, including 21 All-Americans and two D3 champions. In Cleveland, the Case Western Reserve wrestling coach, Bob Del Rosa, has mentored the grapplers for 44 years including four national champions.)

We finally agreed on a time, and Leo also invited me to practice. When I told him I probably would come on Tuesday, he reminded me that practice Tuesdays is at 6, because it's science lab day.

Honey is the mother of invention
Last night about 6 as I was entering New York or crossing the GW bridge or bumping along the New Jersey Turnpike, my refrigerator fell out.
The cabinet that once held it in place gave out at the top. It's kind of hinged now, with the bottom still attached to the cabinetry and the top swinging free.
The fridge is fixed now, with a couple of 2 X 2s and an aluminum pole that I also use to prop up my hinged bed platform platform when I need to get something out.
I also tied an empty plastic bag around the pole so I won't hit my head when I "cross the kitchen."
And she's still cool. Saved my beer.

The commonwealth of mixed messages
Virginia license plates used to say "Virginia is for Lovers." Perhaps they still do, but there isn't a single Virginia car parking in the welcome center where I am taking a break.
But on the sign marking the Commonwealth of Virgina at the border with West Virginia, the current message is "Virginia Is Open for Business."

What about Honey's tires?
Yesterday it took me about four hours to drive 30 miles because I had to stop at an interstate truck stop soon after setting out.
I thought I had blown another tire. Upon further review, the mechanic figured out that the rubber valve stem extensions that facilitate airing up double truck tires had been installed improperly and my shiny plastic fake chrome wheel cover had carved them like a knive slices into a pumpkin. Thank goodness only one went flat.

Don't forget ...
... to read the story all about this road trip. Click here.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

On Thursday I bought two new tires at Hogan Tire Service in Waltham, Ma.
This morning I departed Waltham about 9:45 and had another blowout about 11.

Gary checks out Honey's tires. "Inside tire is flat," he said.

Didn't realize what had happened at first, but pulled in to a TA center on Interstate 84.
Now I'm sitting and a little bit unhappy. Waiting for Honey to get pulled into a service bay to see what my options are. Really anxious to get back to Atlanta for a couple of days. Only 1,023 miles to go.
The good news is that I double checked my fantasy football lineup this morning and activated Robbie Gould of the Bears because my regular kicker, Nate Kaeding of the Chargers is hurt.

Reminds me of the wisdom of that old saw, "Always draft a back-up kicker."

At least a couple of people have mentioned that they were jealous of my adventure. At this moment, it seems to me there is nothing of which to be jealous.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Good morning from Boston, where I slept in a house without wheels last night.
Visiting my son Benjamin for two days before heading to Atlanta on Sunday. (Last month I visited Joe, my older son, in Brooklyn during my NYU stop.)
There's a break in conference play in soccer, and the volleyball and cross country championships are coming up. NYU hosts the cross country championships at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Oct. 30 (take the 1 or 9 train and get off at 242nd Street). Case Western Reserve University hosts the volleyball tournament in Cleveland on Nov. 5-6. Conference play in soccer resumes Friday and Sunday.

There's an article about the UAA and my road trip on ncaa.org. Check it out.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Spring ball ended last week, so it's time to fix up the Brandeis baseball field.

Brandeis University is the fifth stop on my gas-hogging UAA road trip, and it feels like a marathon, now. I haven't hit the wall, but I know it could come around any turn.
Honey, my 1984 RV, and I left Atlanta on Monday, Sept. 27. Her speedometer read 59,584 (in 1984, the speedometers in Ford trucks only went as high as 99,999). Today, she's at 62,231. That's 2,647 miles -- so far.

That hill is steeper than it looks.

Honey's estimated carbon footprint, according to a woman named Katrina at the University of Rochester, is 4.1 tons per thousand miles. If I ever do this again, I'm getting the students of the UAA to design me a deep-fat-fryer-fueled green RV. Only obstacle will be eating all those french fries, but I think I can do it.
Brandeis was founded in 1948 and is named for Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Brandeis is on a big, big, BIG hill in Waltham (wall-THAM), Ma., just outside Boston. From the perspective of my 59-year-old overworked legs, its most significant architectural feature is long sets of steps, most of them going up.

Here's a rundown of my visit:

Sunday, Oct. 18
• Arrive at 7 a.m. after Honey blew a tire on the Mass Pike.
• Attend UAA soccer matches against Emory University, which is in Atlanta, which is where I have a comfortable bed and two sweet, but totally untrained dogs named Claire and Leia. (Lisa, my kindly neighbor lady, has been wrestling with them since I left.) The Emory women won, the men's match was a tie.
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Sheryl Sousa, the Brandeis AD, tells me about the UAA's commitment to academics first and to providing a first-class athletic experience for its D3 athletes. Events are run with professionalism and precision. (Sousa is a Brandeis grad, and played volleyball here with Karen Farrell, the current volleyball coach at Case Western Reserve University. There's a lot of in-breeding in the UAA, but the gene pool is so deep that it seems to strengthen the conference.)

• Attend an American Studies class about the '60s, with Mia DePalo, a basketball player from Rumson, N.J. Jacob "Jerry"Cohen is a legend here. In fact, some students are known to "minor in Jerry Cohen." He has played basketball with the Celtics of the '70s and tennis with his friend the late Howard Zinn. (I assume Zinn was a southpaw, but I didn't get to ask.) Zinn once taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, where Emory University is located, and he graduated from NYU, one of the eight schools in the University Athletic Association.

An evening with Jerry Cohen.

Cohen dramatizes the events in his lectures, doing the voice of the chancellor of Berkely who ordered students out of Sproul Hall in 1964 and doing the voice of the student who responded "Blank you!"
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Visit the Goldfarb and Farber libraries, where the librarians I meet are as funny and loose as a soccer team eating a pre-game meal. When I ask what collections are the most prized and most popular, Sarah Shoemaker reels of a list so quickly and so long that I pray my digital recorder is working.
• Interview Luke Teece, leading scorer this season for the men's soccer team. His father went to Brandeis and played soccer for the same coach as Luke, Mike Coven, who is in his 38th year as head coach and won the D3 national title in 1976. This has been a turn-around season for Luke, who only seemed to hit the post last year.

Tuesday, Oct. 20
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Cook pancakes for the guy whose parking space I took. He turns them down. "I hate pancakes," he says. "I was just joking yesterday. I'm like that."
• Eat 16 pancakes.
• Check the number of page views on my blog. • Talk to Mike Coven, the soccer coach, who is actually shorter than I am but who has lifted a lot more weights and pedaled a lot more miles on the stationary bike. Mike is a very funny guy with a Boston accent who stays loose but takes the game seriously, very seriously. In a non-conference match Wednesday afternoon he came unglued when his team gave up a meaningless goal at the end on a corner kick. Brandeis 3, Springfield College 1.

Anita Hill was on campus Wednesday. So was local TV.

• Talk to Pete Varney, briefly, the legendary (did I use that cliche earlier?) Brandeis baseball coach who as a tight end caught the two-point conversion pass in 1968 for Harvard's 29-29 win over Yale. Varney played in "The Show" for several years and his nickname was "Big Fella." About being known for the catch, all he would say was, "It's better than being known as the guy who dropped it." (According to Wikipedia, Tommy Lee Jones played OT for that team.)
The players I talked to are in awe of Varney for his baseball knowledge and coaching skill. I got the impression that when he tells a kid to do something, they do it.
• Interview Jessica Johnson, the "newest" Brandeis coach who has coached softball for five years. In her fourth year, she took the team to its first NCAA tournament. She's unashamed about having been an English major at Wheaton College, one of Brandeis' local rivals in many sports.
• Get fuse replaced in Honey at the repair shop on the other side of the tracks of the commuter rail line parking lot where I am parked.
• Watch Manny Vasquez and his crew from Wagon Wheel Landscaping replace the raw clay bricks around home plate on the baseball field and rework the pitchers mound and third base. The bricks have to be special ordered. They lay down something called "stone mix" on the base paths and "infield mix" around the bases, home plate and the pitchers mound.
• Talk to Francine Kofinas, sophomore goal keeper for the women's soccer team from Long Island. Next Thursday, Francine will make her first plane trip ever when the teams fly to St. Louis and Chicago for the next round of UAA play. Like all the UAA athletes I have talked to, she seems unconcerned about her first flight.
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Decide with the counsel of my dog sitter that I should take the girls with me for the last leg of my trip.

Wednesday, Oct. 21

Rick Sawyer signs banner.

• Attend a business class about marketing with Alex Tynan, who toes the slab for the Judges baseball team, pitches from the port side, and reveres Coach Varney. Class this day is a guest lecture by Jeff Freedman, CEO of a small and very successful marketing company called Small Army. Jeff lost his business partner to cancer two years ago, and it still breaks him up. One outcome is a fund raising event called Be Bold Be Bald, so if you see someone on Friday with a "bald hat," you'll know it's from Jeff's effort.
One point he stressed in his lecture was the importance of story telling in marketing.
Jeff: Say hello to Jerry Cohen and Mike Coven.

• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Receive an email from David K., commissioner of the fantasy college basketball league to which I belong, that our draft will be Nov. 12. I'll be home by then.
• Find out Anita Hill, a professor in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, is teaching that day. Local TV stakes out campus hoping for a shot of her in a car. That'll make some dramatic video. Hope she's not traveling in Honey.
• Drop off Honey at Hogan Tire Service in Waltham to have two new tires put on the inside rear.
• Interview Rick Sawyer, the Brandeis vice president in charge of student affairs (All UAA athletics departments report to Student Affairs and the president's office). Rick was briefly interim AD in 1983 when he first got wind of some schools wanting to start a unique athletic conference. The charter was eventually signed in 1987.
Brandeis, Rick tells me, is immensely proud of its membership in the UAA and shows it by hanging a huge blue banner in the atrium of the student center.
• Check the number of page views on my blog.
• Pick up Honey from Hogan's. Pick up my busted generator from the repair shop. They replaced a six inch plastic tube that burned out because the exhaust from one generator was pointed at the housing of the other generator.

• Attend midweek, non-conference soccer games. The Brandeis men beat Springfield College 3-1 (Yes, Luke scored) and the women beat Bowdoin (Yes, Francine had another shutout).
• Post on my blog a list of songs that are blasted during warm-ups for UAA soccer and volleyball teams. Post a poll to vote on the best list and notice that no one is voting. (Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't.)

Yet another guy jacks up Honey.

• Get an email that a story about my road trip is posted on ncaa.net.
• Think to myself how clever I am for including a picture of JayZ and Rick Lackner, the Carnegie Mellon football coach, with the play lists from UAA teams.
• Receive another email from David K that our fantasy basketball draft will be Nov. 9, because of a scheduling conflict. OK. If Honey makes it, I should be home by then.
• Buy a six pack of Long Trail Ale brewed by the Vermont brewery Long Trail (I think it's important to sample local brews along the way. Order a pizza from Cappy's, the pizza parlor that I can see from my living room window. Drink a couple of ales and eat two slices of pizza (OK, maybe it was three).
• Arrange to attend physics, advanced calculus and developmental psychology classes with Luke.
• Talk to my sister Melanie, who paid for the two new tires about meeting in Chicago. She concurs on taking the dogs with.

Thursday, Oct. 21
• I'm late for physics, and you know how the professor likes kids to be on time. But first I need to gas up my generator which just ran out, and then I need to check the number of page views on my blog.

Whom am I leaving out?
That's one of my favorite lines from Johnny Carson, a popular TV host back in my day.
There's a lot more folks at Brandeis who made this stop the best one yet on my odyssey (I write that about every school).

Eat 16 pancakes. Check.

But Adam Levin has been the most patient and helpful. He's the SID at Brandeis, and he hasn't blinked at my intrusive requests or annoying presence. And he has a seven-week-old baby boy named Drew who is beautiful and has a great head of hair. Being an SID at a UAA school keeps you busier than a one-armed paper hanger with hives.

Other stuff
I need a brave soul to drive with me and my two dogs from Atlanta to Chicago next week. No way I can make it without help. Leaving the ATL on Friday night after soccer matches at Emory and arriving in the Windy City by 11 a.m. Sunday.
I left out some of the times that I checked the number of page views on my blog, but I think you get the idea. Janice Quinn, the former women's basketball coach at NYU whose team won a national championship and is the Quinn-essential UAA coach, might want to call a timeout and reassess her conclusion that I have no ego. Or maybe even T me up.

This blog post has been corrected to reflect that Anita Hill is a professor in the Heller School of Social Policy and Management.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Rick Lackner, the Carnegie Mellon football coach, had asked one of his assistants to put “Duke of Earl” on Rick’s phone as his ringtone. Rick graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 1979 and has been the head coach since 1986.

Rick Lackner likes "Duke of Earl."

But the assistant couldn’t find it, so he set Rick’s ringtone to Rap Tone from Verizon.

Funny.

Here is the 2010 version of “Duke of Earl” – the warm-up music that several teams blast across the stadium or court while they are warming up before a match.

Typically, players suggest the songs and a person in each athletics department approves the music.

Tell me which list you like best by voting in the poll on the blog at uaaroadtrip.blogspot.com. I tried to spellcheck the list and ruined two laptops in the process, so forgive me the spelling inconsistencies

(I need a driver: After Emory plays Rochester in Atlanta next Friday, I need to drive to Chicago in time for the Sunday morning matches. 1,100 miles. No way that Honey, Claire and Leia can do it by ourselves. Any intrepid souls out there who want to help me drive to Chicago? Getting home will be your problem. kevinsquieraustin@gmail.com)

Monday, October 18, 2010

Keeper Scott Garfing of Rochester has a kiss for grandma after the NYU match.

Without a doubt, most of the fans at UAA soccer matches are parents of players or grandparents of players or brothers or sisters of players.

Some travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to see their kids play or just to see their kids. They bring vats of pasta and plates with cakes for post-game meals. They bring hugs and hopes and grandma.

This is not their first rodeo, but for the parents of seniors it will be their last.

The family gathering after the Emory-Brandeis men's soccer match.

At the Brandeis-Emory soccer matches on Sunday there was nearly and equal number of Emory fans as those cheering for Brandeis.

Here's the routine after a match: Coach holds a brief (sometimes long) team meeting to go over the match while it's fresh in young minds; players gather up their gear bags and sweats and water bottles (some take off their jerseys, some put their nylon warm-ups back on); relatives gather at the spot that marks transition from field to family (there's a meeting place like this at each UAA school); the familes greet their kids and talk about the game or dinner that night or law school applications or plans for Thanksgiving; some of the kids stare at their feet, some look around to see where their teammates are, some allow hugs, some eagerly accept kisses; then they disperse until the next game.

Sports is tightly stitched in their family fabric. Food, too. For years parents have driven children to soccer practices or volleyball tournaments or swim meets. Millions of hours together in vans and SUVs, sometimes traveling to distant events, sharing precious time.

Josh Richards

Sharon Richards' son Josh plays soccer for the University of Rochester. I meet her Friday in the concourse of Fauver Stadium, when the weather was so nasty that she was going to "watch" the match from a chair inside through the narrow tunnel that led to the aluminum stands.
She's attended hundreds of Josh's games and she sat through some pretty awful weather. Before the match Josh told me that she would be under cover if it was bad, and he was totally OK with that. (As it turned out, the rain that soaked the earlier women's game stopped for the men's match, and Sharon, with her heavy coat and and scarf and earmuffs, did see the game from the stands).
Josh has played soccer since he was 4, she told me. He's a totally focused kid (as are most UAA high achievers and chose Rochester because, among other more substantial reasons, he likes the cold. Go figure.

Wash U women chow down after match at CMU.

Rochester really needed a win that night against Chicago, but fell behind. They tied it up in the second half on a set piece, and Josh was credited with an assist. Afterward, in the dark outside the stadium, I could tell from his face and his stance that he wasn't happy with the tie, but it beats a loss. And he didn't think he should have gotten an assist. (As of Monday, he is credited with an assist in the boxscore.)

During UAA matches, the parents reveal how well they know the game. The more uninhibited ones yell at the refs. "You've got to make that call ref!" "It's a handball!" "That's a terrible call." "Let 'em play!"

They also appreciate good play and they die with every missed opportunity. "Good ball Chelsea." (Or Emily or Lauren or Ashley or Ben or Nick) "Go Blue." "Keep pressuring!"
Other, more distant relatives aren't quite as knowledgeable. Perhaps they only come along for one game a year, like the man at the Brandeis match Sunday who yelled out "I got it, I got it" when a very high pass was made near the stands. He was promptly chided: "You don't do that at soccer matches."
Or the grandmotherly looking woman at an NYU game earlier this season was complaining via cellphone to someone that the field was "in the middle of a cow pasture. And they charge you eight bucks every time you have to cross the bridge."
I don't think the folks at the College of Staten Island, where the game was played, would agree with her.

NYU women stretch toward mom's post-game buffet. Note dog.

Beyond the bond of teammates, parents bond with each other. Wash U parents seem to be out in force at every UAA event that I have attended. They plan meals and gatherings and sometimes travel together from hotels or motels. They make new friendships built on their shared experiences with their kids.
Sometimes a dad will attend one road match and a mom will attend another to keep the cost down but keep the support up.

For the NYU-Rochester match, the mother of NYU's goalie, Matt Stieve, arranged her overseas trip so she could be there. An IT specialist who had to be in London, she flew from Chicago to New York and arranged to have a layover before continuing to London. Turns out that Matt had an incredible game in goal with two point blank saves in the first half that allowed NYU to tie the men from Rochester.
One week later, Matt's dad came to Cleveland to watch NYU play Case Western Reserve.

These final games are especially precious to those UAA athletes. Earlier this year, the parents of Jack Anderson, the Carnegie Mellon basketball player, made plans to attend each of his final games -- home and away. They drove all the way to Washington D.C. in terrible weather for the game against Catholic University. They made it to D.C., but the game was canceled. Jack was the leading scorer for CMU in the makeup with 18 points.

After the hugs, kisses and pasta, it's study hall at a picnic table.

(Rescheduling a non-conference basketball game 400 miles away is typical, not unusual in the UAA. While the academics and research at each of the universities is Division I all the way, their athletic programs compete in the NCAAs Division 3. No scholarships. Strict code of operations. D3 includes more than 400 schools, most of which don't have the budgets or resources of the UAA schools. But the UAA programs operate in a way that reflects the professionalism and perfection of their member schools. Facilities are top notch, coaches are skilled and experienced, events are run as if they were Major League Baseball or the NFL. Their mantra: Our athletes, our programs, our events must reflect the quality of our institutions. As Sheryl Sousa, the Brandeis athletics director told me in her office Sunday, "We all want to make things perfect." Brandeis was hosting an eight-team round robin UAA volleyball tournament as well as the soccer matches on Sunday.)

Matt Stieve

Matt Stieve is a senior. This is his last season of organized soccer.
Neither Matt nor any of his teammates or other UAA athletes will "go pro." That's not why they practice 20 hours a week or study in airports waiting to fly to St. Louis or Atlanta. None of them are pro material. But they are dedicated, high achievers, focused on training, team and winning. They know, however, that the classroom is where their future lies.
That's why they chose Brandeis or Case Western Reserve or Carnegie Mellon or Chicago or Emory or NYU or Rochester or Washington.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Brandeis is the fifth stop on my UAA Road Trip, where the Emory women beat Brandeis 2-0. The Emory men and the Judges tied 1-1 in soccer.

The season's second volleyball round robin also was also played at Brandeis on Sunday, and the headline is that No. 1 ranked Wash U lost two matches. First to NYU in five sets and then to Case Western Reserve in four.

SOCCER
After Sunday's games, the NYU men are in first place with 8 points. Chicago leads the women with 9 points.

The University of Rochester men score the tying goal against Chicago on Oct. 15.

Honey and I made it to Boston from Rochester about 7 a.m. this morning. We're parked on a level lot (woohoo) at the edge of campus next to the commuter rail line.
Friday night I watched the Rochester women beat Chicago 1-0 in the cold, wind and rain. Nasty night. The Rochester men tied Chicago 1-1 in the 7:30 game. The rain had stopped, thankfully for the fans.

The fans go wild at Fauver Stadium in Rochester.

The drive across Western New York and Western Massachusetts was absolutely gorgeous, though windy. Fall color appears to be about 60 percent near Rochester but more like 85 percent in Massachusetts.
Normally, I don't find road signs very interesting, but this morning on I-90 I passed a sign that said "N.H.- Maine and Cape Cod, 2 miles." Something very romantic and alluring about being so close to this corner of the United States. Only in the UAA.

Today, Emory is at Brandeis; Chicago at Case Western Reserve; Wash U at Rochester; and Carnegie Mellon at NYU.

Nate wrestles a tire and wins.

Sounds like a gunshot on the Mass Pike
Honey and I were making good time getting to Waltham from Rochester last night on the Mass Pike when I heard a very loud pop. Knew immediately what it was cause I heard the same sound on the New Jersey Turnpike a couple of weeks ago.
Honey blew another tire. Left, rear, inside (not one of the new ones).
I need an official UAA Road Trip Tire Sponsor.
Nate McCarthy was home eating dinner and watching the Texas-Nebraska game when he got the call. Nate works for Pete's Tire Barns, Inc. (16 locations in Western Mass.) He had to drive down to his shop in Springfield to pick up the bright yellow then head to my location.

This tire is history. A rare 8.75 by 16.5.

We checked my spare first, and it looked OK though not perfect.

After about a half hour under Honey with a jack and wrestling tires off and on, Nate had me back on the road.

Told me is was good that I didn't have tire rot. Said he went on a call once where a guy with a newer RV than Honey (most RVs are newer than Honey) had two tires pop while his rig was sitting in his driveway.

Nate played football for Dallas Community College in Texas for a couple of years, but quit because of shoulder injuries and a lack of playing time. In high school, he cleared 6 feet in the high jump.

Friday, October 15, 2010

The ROTC unit runs laps while the field hockey team meets before dawn Friday.

The first team on the field today at the University of Rochester was the Marines.

At Zero Six Forty Five, 19 member of the ROTC unit arrived at Fauver stadium to scramble through the orange-coned obstacle course under the lights and then run some laps carrying 45-pound packs, lead by their instructor, Capt. Chapman.

DeLong wants to improve his X-C time.

Among the the camo-ed runners was David DeLong, a freshman from Philadelphia who is majoring in mechanical engineering. With captain's permission, he held himself out of the laps because he has a big race Saturday, the U of R Blue and Gold Invitational.
Next up, the Rochester field hockey team, which took the field at zero seven hundred. They are coming off a come-from-behind, OT win against Ithaca College on Wednesday.

As Einstein would have said, operating the athletics program at Rochester is all about time and space.
The field of Fauver Stadium, built in 1930, is used nearly around the clock by the football team, both soccer teams, field hockey and intramurals. And ROTC.
When I went to sleep in Honey about midnight, the lights were still blazing while about a dozen kids played recreational football.

Rochester is my fourth stop on a 4,200 mile trip to visit each of the schools in the University Athletic Association. Every one is my favorite. Earlier in my trip I loved NYU, Case Western Reserve University and Carnegie Mellon University.
Today, I love Rochester the bestest.

From the notebook
Yesterday, I attended a graduate level course on the films of Andy Warhol with Lindsay Macaluso. She's from Amherst, N.Y., and plays shortstop (or anywhere she's needed) on the softball team. She has a tiny stud in her pierced nose. Mac is fired up every minute of every day. She hit .331 last season and scored 35 runs.

Rush Rhees library at U of R.

She wasn't that crazy about softball when she was 11 or 12, so she worked her way onto the boys Little League team (she has four brothers). Caused quit a stink, and the coach even quit the team over it, but she held her ground.
Yesterday, she held her ground in film study. Among the birkenstocks and beards, she was the only student wearing the deep blue and yellow warm-ups of Rochester sports during the screening and discussion of Warhol's two-reel film, out of focus, black and white "Poor Little Rich Girl" with Edie Sedgwick. Her professor is Douglas Crimp, an expert on Warhol and former managing editor of October, the influential journal of postmodern art theory. Warhol, by the way, attended Carnegie Mellon, but didn't play sports.
Like Warhol, Lindsay has range.

Undefeated
Mike Neer would never describe himself as a legend, but everyone who knows him would.
He coached men's basketball for 34 years at the University of Rochester. His team won the D3 national championship in 1990. They reached the NCAA playoffs 12 times and the Final Four four times.
Neer was here when the UAA was founded 24 years ago, and he conference philosophy of academics first suits him perfectly.
He's a coach's coach, with a bag full of one-liners and swear words, such as "cheese and crackers" and "son of a biscuit eater," which he adopted from Sleepy Thompson, his coach at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Alexandria, Va., in the '60s.
As I travel around the UAA collecting stories, I have a growing sense of responsibility for getting it right. Mike Neer's story is one of my most precious bundles.
I met Mike, who is 6-7 and thin as a lamppost, outside my RV, Honey, in the parking apron next to Fauver Stadium. A grounds keeper saw him arrive from a distance and came up to us quickly, his hand extended to Neer, who announced his retirement in May.
"How's it going coach?"
"Undefeated," he said.
Today, Oct. 15, is the first day of basketball practice, the first day in 34 years that Mike Neer won't be on the court.

Big weekend at Rochester
This weekend the campus population nearly doubles from 9,500 with 7,000 people expected for Meliora Weekend -- Homecoming, parents weekend and reunions. There are huge white tents everywhere and the campus is totally spruced up. It's a beautiful setting without the sprucing. Classic red brick buildings, criss-crossed quads, red and gold trees, energetic and optimistic students and the Genesee River curving along campus.
Above it all rises the dome of Rush Rhees Library, named not for a donor but for Benjamin Rush Rhees, the university's third president. Russ Rhees sounds as good as it looks, with a 50-bell carillon that chimes every fifteen minutes.
Meliora -- even better.

Sports in the right perspective
The athletics director at the University of Rochester is George VanderZwaag (wonder if he's Dutch). When I talked to him Wednesday, he put sports in perspective. While kids are practicing or playing games on the fields, the scientists and researchers on campus are looking for cures to cancer or solutions to energy needs. Relatively, sports is play time. The real world comes first. That's how they do it at Rochester and around the UAA.

Game day
The soccer teams from the University of Chicago are already in town. Flew in Thursday. That's another thing that makes the UAA unique in the world of D3 sports. Today at 5:00 the women play Rochester. The men's match is at 7:30. Weather forecasts earlier this week called for a 70 percent chance of rain, 20-mph winds and temperatures in the low 50s. But right now the sun is coming up and the skies are only partly cloudy (in relative, Rochester terms.) As every person in every part of America likes to say about their own climate, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

It's good to be king

No, I didn't separate colors.

The folks at Rochester are treating me like royalty, as have NYU, CWRU and CMU. Lisa, the kindly neighbor lady back in Atlanta, thinks I like that, and as usual, she is right. I'm parked outside the tunnel of Fauver Stadium, where I can see all the athletes coming and going for taping, untaping, suiting up and practicing. They even let me do my laundry in one of the huge industrial washers under the stands. Provo, king of equipment, calls me sir and can't stop asking whether he can do anything for me. I am grateful.

The spelling of Rush Rhees Library has been corrected in this blog entry.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

D3 polls are always released on Tuesdays, so here's a roundup of where UAA teams rank.

Do athletes, coaches and administrators pay attention to polls? Heck yes.
As one coach told me, if you want to compete for a national championship, the first step is competing for a UAA championship. Trust me, if I get a ranking wrong I will hear about it -- and correct it.
For those of you involved in UAA sports, these listings aren't news, because most of you called them up on the InterWeb the second they came out. For those of you who are just gaining awareness of the University Athletic Association, they show how these programs compete nationally.
About 450 colleges and universities belong to the NCAA's Division 3.

About this blog: I am traveling around the country to attend soccer games at every school in the University Athletic Association, thus the random photo of my RV, Honey, parked at the Liberty Harbor Marina and RV Park in Jersey City earlier this month.
Today, Oct. 13, I am at the University of Rochester.

Success in UAA athletics often turns on continuity in coaching. Carnegie Mellon has several coaches who have been on staff more than 10 years and a few who have been there more than 20 years.

Under the jacket, Lackner is wearing a Steelers shirt.

Rich Lackner, the head football coach, graduated from CMU in 1979 and never left. He's in his 25th season as head coach (166-74-2), but what's more unusual is the fact that his offensive and defensive coordinators have been with him the entire time.
That's continuity cubed.
Recruiting is key, too, and Lackner is up against the top small colleges in Ohio and Pennsylvania and he's up against the Ivy League, which has some pretty fair schools.
When it gets to the dotted line, Lackner is looking for smart kids who want to compete. As an NCAA Dvision III school, CMU is eligible for the national tournament.
"If a kid doesn't want a chance -- at least a chance -- to go to an NCAA playoff game, I'm not interested in him. I want those kids who have visions of championships and making the NCAA playoffs."
Lackner and his staff are Pittsburgh through and through. When someone asks him what the sports scene is like, he has a ready story. "If you go to a Steelers game, you'll find a guy who's a plumber sitting next to a guy who hangs drywall sitting next to a guy who's a vice president of U.S. Steel. And the guy with his face painted is the guy from U.S. Steel.
"That's just Pittsburgh."

Been here forever

I also dropped in on Dario Donatelli, the cross country and track coach who joined the staff the year the UAA was founded, 1987. Donatelli and Gary Aldrich, associate track head coach and Slippery Rock graduate, were watching film (video) of the big meet held the past weekend at Schenley Park. Film day in cross country? It wasn't what I thought. The reason they go over the video is to make sure each runner's finish was recorded in the right order and with the right time.

Donatelli, right, and Aldrich review cross country video.

Another beauty of D3 sports is the emphasis on academic achievement. If you can't win on the field, you can win in the classroom because most sports honor the teams with the highest grade point average. Last year, the CMU men's golf team won the top honor for their cumulative Grade Point Average. Head coach Rich Erdlyi, who has been on the staff 25 years and graduated from Pitt, received the plaque marking the honor recently but hasn't had time to put it on his office wall yet. Actually, there's barely room for it among the dozens of other plaques already hanging there.
Oh, forgot to mention, Erdyli's teams usually win on the golf course, too.

New kid on the block

Yon Struble got cut from a club soccer team when he was 7. Good thing for Carnegie Mellon University that he didn't give up. Today he is in his first season as the head women's soccer coach at CMU, after coaching at Union College, Western Carolina and Georgia State University. Although he's new to Pittsburgh, it sounds like he likes it here, and he uses CMU's unique urban campus setting as a recruiting tool.
"What we've got here is the best of both worlds," he tells recruits. It is a real college campus in the middle of a big city. "Pittsburgh's clean and green and safe. You can get out and explore, but at the end of the day you come back to a real college campus."
On Sunday, his team got clocked by 4-0 by Washington University, and Struble was not happy. Not because of the loss, but because of a lack of effort in the second half. And he let the girls know it.
"You said one of your goals was to beat Wash U, and you really didn't do it. You didn't show respect for what they can do."
From his first spring practice, he told the girls that their goal was too out work other teams, because they might not have the same level of talent, but they wouldn't lose because they were outworked. Saturday they were outworked, he said, "And they knew it."

Later, I talked to Elsa Wu, a sophomore midfielder from Ellicott City, Md., who summed up her reaction to the game. It's a response that also suits Carnegie Mellon athletics and athletics at every UAA school: "Good enough just isn't good enough."

Can I See the Bill of Rights?

One of four known first edition copies of the Bill of Rights is in a vault in the middle of the Carnegie Mellon campus. It's kind of rare and valuable, so they don't bring it out that often, usually on Constitution day.
It's kept in the Posner Center and belongs to the Posner Collection, which is housed in a kind of dark-wood paneled, quiet, underground LEED certified building that has fabulous shrubs growing on the roof. There are a lot of things named Posner on campus.

Behind this door ...

I asked Gloriana St. Clair, Dean of University Libraries, and Erika Linke, associate dean, if I could see it. (They are two of the funniest, coolest librarians I have ever met. Wonder why I think of librarians as serious. Maybe it's because of the Bookman episode from "Seinfeld.")
"No" was all they said.
But they did let me see the door to the vault where it is housed. Because I know the Bill of Rights by heart, I wasn't that disappointed.

What's on tap
Today, Oct. 12 (my sister Melanie's birthday), I head for Rochester, N.Y., the fourth stop on the road trip.
I Googled the directions last night, hoping that I would only get lost once.
Weird, but Google Maps came back with this: "Drive north to Erie and turn right."
Check.

Conference Standings

All-Academic Honorees

Athletics Web Sites

College admissions 'to don't' list

Here's a handy "to do" and "to don't" article for parents with children in the throes of college admissions from "The Choice," a New York Times blog.Go to The Choice

Who sez?

• Mr. Natural: Always use the right tool for the job.• Fan Man: Sit in your assigned seat.• David K: Well good. That's good.• Fan Man: You just about have to these days.• Harold Pudder: Some folks is just too smart.• Lisa: Can I speak candidly?• Ben: What is it Lassie? Do you smell something, girl?

What Is the UAA?

The University Athletic Association is a group of eight of the country's biggest and best private research universities. Member schools are: Brandeis, Emory, Case Western Reserve, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, NYU, University of Rochester and Washington University in St. Louis. Student athletes compete in more than 20 sports at the NCAA Division III level and consistently rank among the top athletes and students nationally. Click here